As we commemorate the 497th anniversary of the Reformation
this week, those who stop to think about the anniversary (too few of us, no
doubt) will probably either celebrate it as the birthday of the Protestant
churches, or lament it as the beginning of the great schism that still divides
the western church today. We will think of such revolutionary figures as Luther
and Calvin, men iconoclastic and charismatic enough to have whole traditions
named after them. This way of thinking about the Reformation, though, is liable
to blind us to its most significant feature: it was a reform movement, an
attempt to purify and heal the Catholic Church of its corruptions. Had events
played out a bit differently, the Reformation might have been exactly what its
name implies, rather than a lasting schism or the birth of a new family of
churches. With contemporary ecumenical zeal finally taking hold of conservative
Reformed churches, and Protestant-Catholic dialogue becoming an ever more
prominent fixture of the ecclesiastical landscape, it is worth pausing to
remember this road not taken, the road of Catholic reform, and reflecting
briefly on the causes of its failure.

The peripatetic figure of Peter Martyr Vermigli, the
Italian reformer who found himself successively in Lucca, Zurich, Strasbourg,
Oxford, and then Strasbourgh and Zurich again, may serve as a useful reference
point for this little-known side of the Reformation. Vermigli was born in
Florence in 1499, when the ashes of Savonarola had scarcely cooled and
Michelangelo was just beginning work on his David. Entering the Augustinian
order in 1514 and the University of Padua in 1518, Vermigli soon acquired a
reputation for piety, preaching, and phenomenal erudition. In Padua he formed a
friendship with a student a few months his junior, a like-minded humanist from
England by the name of Reginald Pole, one of the most fascinating and enigmatic
figures of the Reformation. Given Pole's support for church reform and his
closeness to the English royal family, Henry VIII repeatedly sought his support
for his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and eventual break with Rome, but Pole
enraged Henry by refusing to endorse these shocking moves.

Meanwhile, however, both Pole and Vermigli had found
themselves in an ever-widening circle of priests, scholars, and devout laymen
committed to the cause of church reform in Italy. This movement sought a
revival of lay spirituality and devotion, focusing as Luther had on the
believer's direct access to Christ without legalistic intermediaries, and also
on the renewed reading of Scripture, and like Luther campaigned for the
abolition of abuses among the corrupt church hierarchy. Vermigli, was at the
heart of this reforming network as he found himself promoted through a series
of posts in Italy to become one of the highest-ranking officers of the
Augustinian order. Though not directly exposed to the writings of the
Protestant reformers until around 1537, from what we can tell, Vermigli had
independently arrived at many of their same theological insights through his
study of St. Augustine, the favorite church Father of many Protestant
Reformers. In particular, he and his friend Gasparo Contarini were fleshing out
a doctrine of justification by faith not far from that being taught by Luther
and Melanchthon.

The years 1536-37 were pivotal for the Italian reform
movement. Vermigli was appointed consultant to a papal commisison on church
reform, alongside his friends, both newly-made cardinals, Reginald Pole and
Contarini, and other leading reformist Italian churchmen, Jacopo Sadoleto and
Giovanni Carafa, likewise newly-appointed cardinals. The different paths of
these five men symbolize the very different directions that the internal Roman
reform movement soon took. Pole remained a loyal though uncomfortable son of
the Catholic church, seeking to carve out space for moderates and reformists
and favoring a more lenient policy toward Protestants, at least until the end
of his life, when he would preside--just how willingly we are not quite
sure--over Bloody Mary's attempt to extinguish the English Protestant church.
Sadoleto became a committed apologist of the Catholic church, seeking to win
Protestants back by persuasive writing; his most famous attempt was a letter to
the people of Geneva in 1539, which provoked one of the classics of Protestant
polemic, John Calvin's Reply to Sadoleto. Carafa, on the other hand, who had
always harbored a fierce ascetic and disciplinary streak, concluded that the
corrupting influence of Protestantizing doctrine was even worse than the
corrupt lives of the clergy, and became the architect of the uncompromising
Counter-Reformation. In 1542 Carafa launched the merciless Roman Inquisition,
over which he presided for the next thirteen years as cardinal and then in 1555
as Pope Paul IV.

The catalyst for Carafa's crackdown was the actions of the
two most evangelical members of this quintet, Contarini and Vermigli. In 1541,
Contarini was appointed as the head of the Catholic delegation to the Colloquy
of Regensburg (or Ratisbon), by which the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sought
to reconcile the rival Catholic and Lutheran parties and thus stabilize his
realm. The Protestant delegation was led by Luther's sidekick Philipp
Melanchthon, and the Strasbourg reformer Martin Bucer; both had a reputation,
unlike Luther himself, for valuing peace and seeking compromise whenever it
could reasonably be achieved. Contarini was a man of similar disposition, and
he had initially intended Vermigli to join him at the gathering, though this
did not transpire, and the other members of his delegation were less irenic.
Despite profound differences, however, the two parties came tantalizingly close
to agreement on the central issue of justification, even signing off on a joint
statement, though not one that would satisfy Luther. But even before Luther had
rejected it as too ambiguous, however, the formula, and the Colloquy, were
doomed.

The Pope and his advisors angrily rejected articles that
Contarini sent to them, and insisted that these matters could only be settled
by a general council presided over by the Pope--which was to materialize as the
Council of Trent five years later. Contarini was recalled to Italy, stopping to
confer with his friend Vermigli in Lucca before dying a few months later in
disgrace. Within a year, the Italian reform movement was scattered to the winds
as the Inquisition got underway; Vermigli and many of his students openly
declared for Protestantism and fled north, while Pole tried to shelter his
fellow moderate reformists from the wrath of Carafa. Pole had one more
opportunity to change the direction of the Roman church, coming within one vote
of being elected pope in 1549. To avoid conflict, however, he withdrew his name
and the hardliners gained control; by Carafa's death in 1559, almost the last
vestiges of evangelical reform in Italy had been stamped out, and the Council
of Trent had decisively turned its back on reconciliation with the Protestants.

One more tantalizing opportunity was to present itself in
1561, however, and Vermigli once again was involved, after an illustrious
career through the Protestant centers of northern Europe. In France, a nation
that, while devout, had always harbored something of an independent streak
vis-à-vis the Papacy, the Queen Mother Catherine de' Medici, de facto ruler as
regent of her ten-year-old son, was seeking to steer a middle course between
the Huguenot and Catholic nobility vying for influence. Ignoring the decrees of
Trent and the remonstrances of the papacy, Catherine determined to call a
national church council, the Colloquy of Poissy, in 1561. Theodore Beza headed
the Protestant delegation and was joined by Vermigli, whose Florentine
background, it was hoped, would help influence the Queen.

After inconclusive opening sessions, leading members of
both Catholic and Protestant delegations convened a private conference before
the Queen, where, after a couple weeks of arguments they were able to produce a
statement on the divisive issue of the Eucharist that while completely
satisfying no one, was cautiously accepted by all. Unfortunately, as at
Regensburg, once the formula was shared with the other Catholic prelates, it
was angrily rejected and the Catholic negotiators disgraced. The Colloquy
broke up without resolution, and not long afterward, France spiralled into
religious civil war.

What can we learn from these episodes (besides the
realization that the Reformation was a much more complex and unpredictable
affair than we might have previously imagined)? Perhaps the clearest
lesson of Regensburg, Poissy, and the failure of evangelical reform to capture
the heart of the Roman church, is that while certainly embracing all
opportunities for meaningful fraternal dialogue, we need to maintain a healthy
skepticism about the apparent contemporary rapprochement between Protestantism
and Rome. We have seen our own version of Regensburg in the Joint
Declaration on Justification--aside from the ambiguities of the formula, which
would no doubt have vexed Luther, the fact remains that reconciliation remains
contingent on the good pleasure of the magisterium, which reserves full right
to determine the boundaries of doctrine. Progress on the material principle
of the Reformation is all well and good, but remains fragile indeed so long as
the formal principle, sola Scriptura, is rejected.

Likewise, recent Protestant recovery of a robust
sacramentology has held out the hope of at last transcending the great divide
on transubstantiation. George Hunsinger's acclaimed exposition of Calvinist
eucharistic theology toward this end, Eucharist and Ecumenism, might be
considered the modern equivalent of the Reformed formula at Poissy. But
whatever individual Catholic sympathizers Hunsinger may have found, the
Catholic Church as a whole is not about to rewrite their catechism on the
issue. Protestants, especially in America, have been cheered by the appearance
of modern-day Contarinis, Catholic leaders keen to dialogue with and learn from
Protestants. We should welcome such opportunities, but with a sunny cynicism.
We may find that if we keep on talking and studying Scripture and tradition, we
will find common ground with some on justification, the sacraments, and more.
But as long as the magisterium claims (as it certainly still does!) final
authority to determine the shape of that common ground, the ecumenical bridge
remains suspended over a chasm little narrower than the chasm that swallowed
Contarini nearly five hundred years ago. In the end, our model must be a man
like Vermigli--eager to seek reform from within a corrupt institution as long
as he had reasonable opportunity to do so, but not hesitant to shake the dust
from his feet and preach the pure gospel when faced with the choice of
submission to man or to God.

Brad Littlejohn holds a Ph.D from the
University of Edinburgh and is the Managing Editor of Political
Theology Today, the General Editor of The Mercersburg Theology
Study Series and can be found writing regularly at bradlittlejohn.com

Lutheran

Presbyterian

About Me

Retired. Reformed and Presbyterian by background, but dedicated to the Anglican Prayerbook with degrees from Presbyterian and Episcopal seminaries. Informed by both traditions. Not giving up the 1662 BCP for the Presbyterians and not giving up the Westminster Standards for the Anglicans.